A land without Trout labours, in our eyes, under grave physical disadvantages; its currency is, metaphorically, below par, its stocks at a discount. The absence of many modern luxuries in Spain—say, manhood suffrage, school-boards, and the like—we can survive; the absence of trout, never. Not even the presence on mountain, moor, or marsh, of such noble denizens as Spain can boast—the ibex, bustard, and boar, the lynx and lammergeyer—can wholly, from an angler's point of view, fill the void, or atone for the absence of sparkling streams and that gamest of fresh-water game, the trout. The reproach, however, does not apply; for, to her many sporting treasures, Spain can claim, in addition, this gem of the subaqueous world. No one, however, it should be added, who has other lands open to him, should ever go to Spain expressly for trout-fishing.

Subject to the provisoes that follow (fairly extensive ones, too), trout may be said to exist sporadically all over the Iberian Peninsula; but, in the south, they are limited to the alpine streams of the sierras, and seldom descend below the 2,000 feet level. Troutlets abound in the mountain-torrents of the loftiest southern sierras (Nevada, Morena, Ronda, and all their infinite ramifications), the larger fish seeking rather lower levels and deeper pools. Three-pounders grace the classic streams of Genil and Darro, and deserve attention from angling visitors to the famed Moorish fortress of Boabdil and his dark-eyed houris. The Guadiarro, also, and some others of the Mediterranean rivers, afford shelter, in their middle and upper waters, to Salmo fario.

In the sluggish, mud-charged rivers of the corn-plains, and of the upland plateaux, the trout, of course, finds no place. The finned inhabitants of these regions, so far as our limited knowledge goes, are the shad (sÁbalo) and coarse fish, such as dace (lisa) and his congeners, with monster eels, crayfish, and the like. But as the rock-ramparts of the Castiles and Northern Estremadura are approached, our speckled friend again appears. Beneath the towering sierras of Gredos and Avila we have landed him while resting from the severer labours of ibex-hunting on the heights above.

These upland streams of Castile run crystal-clear, with alternate pools and rapids in charming sequence. Many closely resemble our moorland burns of Northumbria—even the familiar sandpiper, the white-chested dipper, and the carol of the sky-lark (a note unheard in Southern Spain), are there to heighten the similitude; but here, heather and bracken are replaced by bresos and piornales—shrubs whose English names (if they have any) we know not. The trout run smaller in inverse ratio of the altitude; in a stream at 8,000 feet the best averaged four to the pound; in another, barely below snow-level, six or eight would be required to complete that weight—small enough, but welcome as a change, both of sport and fare. Who, but an angler, though, can appreciate the heaven-sent joys of casting one's lines on "fresh streams and waters new"?

This watershed marks the southern limit at which (within our observation) the art of fly-fishing is practised by Spanish anglers—of their more usual modes of taking the trout, we treat anon. Fly-fishing, did we say? Fishing with fly would be a more accurate definition; the moment a trout seizes the rudely-tied feathers, he is jerked out, regardless of size or sport—the tackle used, it goes without saying, is of the strongest and coarsest. To play and land a trout secundum artem was, we were assured, impossible, by reason of the malÉsas—weeds, snags, and rocks, which stud the arcana of the depths. But it fell to our lot to demonstrate to our worthy friends that this theory was untenable. With a light twelve-foot bamboo, and on gut finer far than ever entered a Spanish angler's dream (though it all comes from Catalonia), we had the satisfaction of raising, playing, and landing sundry creels-full of shapely fish that exceeded, both as to numbers and weight, the best local performances in manifold proportion. Do not, kind reader, attribute egotistic motives for this statement. No great measure of skill was required to treble or quadruple the natives' takes; and any angler will say at once that such was just the result that might have been expected. While we write, comes a letter from that out-of-the-world spot, asking for a supply of our English gut and flies.

In Portugal also—save on the monotonous levels of the Alemtejo and Algarve—the trout exists in nearly all suitable localities—that is, they are confined to the streams of the hill-country of the north. Years ago, on the virgin rivers of the Entre-Douro-e-Minho, our friend Mr. J. L. Teage enjoyed good sport with trout and gillaroo. It was indeed, to some extent, the success of his mosca encantada that helped to arouse the slumbering utilitarian greed of the simple Lusitanian peasant, who, seeing, or thinking that he saw, an undreamed source of wealth in his rivers, borrowed of his Basque and Galician neighbours their deadly systems of poison and dynamite, and proceeded forthwith to kill the goose that laid this golden egg. As a natural result, at the present day many of the waters of Northern Portugal are all but depopulated—hardly a sizeable fish can now be taken where four or five-pounders swam of yore.

It is, however, the northern provinces of Spain, the Asturias and Cantabrian highlands, and the rivers that run into Biscay, that form the true home of Iberian SalmonidÆ. Here, in a land of towering mountains, pine-clad and mist-enshrouded, and of rushing, rapid streams, are found both the salmon, the sea-trout, and the yellow trout.[39]

Of the Salmon (Salmo salar) in Spain, we have had no experience, and will say nothing more than that the southernmost limit of its range appears to be the river Minho, on the frontier of Portugal, and that the resistless energy of British sportsmen has succeeded (despite the local difficulties referred to later) in acquiring fishing rights of no small excellence. Nor have we fished specially for the sea-trout, which are killed with fly and other sporting lures, both in the upper streams and in the brackish waters of the tideways, all along the Biscayan coast, commencing to "run" in February. Some of their habits appear here to differ from what we observe at home; but, without more precise knowledge, we prefer to pass them by for the present.

No more lovely trouting waters can angling introspect conceive than some of those in Northern Spain. Now surging through some tortuous gorge in successive pools, dark, and foam-flecked, each of which look like "holds" for monsters; now opening out on a hill-girt plateau, where the current broadens into rippled shallows, with long-tailed runs and hollowed banks, the Cantabrian rivers offer promises all too fair. For the unfortunate trout has no fair play meted out to him in this hungry land. No count is taken of his noble qualities, nor of his economic necessities. Poor Salmo fario is here simply a comestible, and nothing more. In season and out, throughout the twelvemonth, he is persecuted—done to death with nets, poison, and dynamite. We have elsewhere remarked on the paradoxical character of the Spanish cazador, and that of the pescador is the same. Though observant of his quarry, apt, intelligent, and highly skilled in the arts of sport, yet he is not a sportsman in the truer sense of the term. His object is utilitarian, not sentimental—he cultivates knowledge and the practices of field-craft simply that he may fill the puchero.

A large proportion of the adult male population of each riverside hamlet in Northern Spain are pescadores—professional fishermen: and all day long one sees them grovelling among the stones of the river-bed fixing those hateful funnel-nets that, at night, entrap the luckless trout as they wander over the shallows. But if they confined their operations to these, and to the infinite variety of nets of other shapes and forms that festoon the village street, things might not be so bad, nor the case of the trout so hopeless and desperate. They have far more deadly devices for massacre by wholesale. Into the throat of some lovely stream is tipped a barrow-load of quicklime: down goes the poisonous dose, dealing out death and destruction to every fish, great or small, in that stream: and, if that is not enough, or if the pool is long and sullen, he proceeds to blow up its uttermost depths with dynamite. And in the hot summer months, when the streams, at lowest summer-level, run almost dry, the heaviest trout are decimated by "tickling."

These methods prevail in every part of Spain and Portugal where trout or other edible fish exist. What chance have they to live?

There are, moreover, difficulties, either of law or of custom, that, in some parts of Spain, render the preservation of rivers troublesome, if not impossible. Hence the poor Spanish SalmonidÆ can hardly hope to receive that Ægis of kindly protection that has been so advantageously (for them, and others) extended to their British and Scandinavian congeners.

Another drawback—which, though common to most lands, is specially pronounced in metalliferous Spain—lies in the noxious effusions from mines, which are freely discharged, for private profit, into public waters. This evil was forcibly brought home by our first day's experience in Cantabria. Hour after hour we had plied most lovely water without success—fly, worm, and phantom alike failed to elicit a single response. On returning with empty creel to the posada, to us our host, "Hombre, have you been fishing the Tesarco? Que disparate! there is a copper-mine two leagues further up: there have been no fish in that river for years." Considering that we had employed a local guide, furnished by the said host, the occasion appeared to justify a protest of not unmeasured wrath. But there is no use losing one's temper in Spain: no quality there so valuable as patience: and the reward of a modicum of reasoned restraint was that the rough, but kind-hearted Asturian insisted next morning on accompanying us himself to another river, seven miles away, where we enjoyed, for Spain, excellent sport.

Under the adverse conditions above outlined, it would be irrational to look for any very great measure of success in Spanish trouting—though, were it possible (which it is not) to secure fair play for the SalmonidÆ, there is no physical or other reason why the Basque and Biscayan provinces might not rival either Scotch or Scandinavian waters. The following brief records of a few experiences in Northern Spain will serve to illustrate what may be expected, in a sporting sense, of the Cantabrian trout.

SantandÉr (Provincia).

Pleasant days, nevertheless, were those spent by this wild riverside. The love of sport is strong in our breasts, but it is not the sole, or an all-potent factor therein. Other things are strong to charm, and here the scenery and accompaniments lacked nothing of beauty and interest—the grand hills, not high but severe in jagged skylines and escarpments that shone like marble in the sun. The air resounded with the music of leaping waters, with the merry carol of Sandpiper and gentler warble of Whinchat: and further off the soaring flight of Buzzard and Raven lent life to the silent hills.[40] From rock-crannies, splashed with the spray of trickling rivulets from above, peeped bouquets of gentian and maiden-hair: the stony "haughs" glowed with bloom of purple iris and asphodel, anemones and wild geraniums, orchids, heaths, ferns, and wild-flowers of a hundred kinds unknown to us.

The weather of the Cantabrian spring-time is strangely variable: every day we had spells of sunshine and shower, wind and calm, fog and fair alternately, often culminating in a sudden clap of thunder that rolled majestically along the deep ravines. Then, for an hour, came down the rain in torrents, and we sought the shelter of some village venta where, for a peseta, we fared sumptuously on good white bread and the delicious cream-like cheese known as queso de Burgos, washed down with the rough red wine of Rioja, cheaper than "smallest beer," and most refreshing.

In every hamlet hung fishing-nets: every day we saw the "fishermen" fixing them, and heard of two-pounders. Yet to us, striving with all the skill we possess, appeared none of these leviathans. Nothing we could do availed to cajole them—that is, assuming their existence. A basket of one to two dozen trout daily, including sundry half-pounders, appeared to be the measure of the river's capacity, or of our skill.

Our best basket in this Province of SantandÉr was twenty-eight trout, weighing eight and a half pounds, and the best fish a fine trout of just over the pound. Him we killed in a deep pool so embedded amidst crags and so difficult of access, that it may be doubted whether feathered fly had ever before flown over its virgin depths. Our friend rose boldly to a small "red palmer": and within a few minutes two more, of hardly inferior weight, had joined him in the basket.